Daddy's Virgin

by Claire Adams

  The last thing I wanted was to go out drinking with Kasey and her wild friends. They got up to all kinds of trouble that I just wasn’t interested in. Even at school, I left the partying mostly alone. Not that I didn’t have fun. It was just that my idea of fun didn’t often match with Kasey’s.

  “I have some things to do around the house,” I said. “And after all the excitement of graduation last week, I just want to relax before I start looking for jobs on Monday.”

  Kasey rolled her eyes, looking extra dramatic with all the mascara and eyeliner she had on. “You’re so boring, Em. You just graduated from college, but you’re acting like you’re forty years old or something. Why would you ever go buy a house immediately when you could just keep on living with Daddy?”

  I didn’t dignify that with a response, just took a bite of my biscuit and let Kasey take the conversation wherever she wanted it to go. Daddy wasn’t even bothering to follow along, or it didn’t look like he was. His eyes were on his rapidly disappearing breakfast. It did my heart good to see him grab another biscuit. I’d brought his favorite blackberry jam from the farmer’s market in Austin. I’d sure miss that market. But it was only a thirty-minute drive from my place in Round Rock if I ever got the hankering.

  “I’m never moving out of here!” Kasey exclaimed in a loud voice that echoed in the dining room. We were used to her outbursts. She’d been loud since the cradle.

  Daddy and I exchanged a look, his light eyes suddenly weary, but his mouth twitching into a small smile that he swallowed back as quickly as it appeared. Mine lasted a little longer.

  “Unless I move to Austin, that is,” she added.

  “What time do you need to be to work?” I asked to bump her off the subject of me returning to Round Rock.

  She looked down at her watch. “Oh, shit! I have to go.” She jumped up from her seat, ran around the table, and gave Daddy a hug. “Bye, Daddy! Bye, Em.” She waved at me before hurrying from the room without clearing her plate. We listened to her footsteps running back to her room to grab her purse and whatever else she needed for the day before running out the front door. It slammed behind her.

  Daddy let out a long breath after the worst of Tornado Kasey blew through the house.

  “She hasn’t changed a bit,” I said, still smiling. She’d always been unable to keep quiet for more than a few seconds and cleaning up after herself had never been one of her strong points. It wasn’t that she purposely avoided it. Her mind just moved so quickly that it never occurred to her to double back to take care of the messes she routinely left in her wake.

  Daddy made a noise to say he agreed with me, but wasn’t going to comment on it. “You have an idea where you’ll look for jobs?”

  “Not really.” I meant to spend the morning combing the internet. I didn’t have many friends left in Round Rock that I could ask. Most everyone had run off to colleges all over the state after high school. Not everyone had come back. But I liked Round Rock and couldn’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else.

  “I’ll keep an eye out in the Register,” he said.

  I bit my tongue. The Round Rock Register was the local paper. They did have a help wanted section, but most places listed their job openings online now and had for a number of years. I didn’t bother telling Daddy that. He was old school. He didn’t even have a computer. It had taken a lot of coaxing to get him to buy a cell phone a few years back. He still only carried it half the time, never seeing the reason behind keeping a phone on him for the twenty-minute drive into town to get to work.

  Without Kasey chattering nonstop in the dining room, it was easier to sit and enjoy each other’s company. I liked this, the times when we could be alone together. I loved my sister and counted her as one of my best friends, but she couldn’t stand a single silent moment. Things were easier between Daddy and me. Always had been.

  I’d missed him something terrible in Austin. Not that I hadn’t driven home, but it was different. It would still be different now, I supposed, since I had my own place a little ways up the road. But I could see him every day now if I wanted. He wasn’t the type to talk on the phone more than once a week, and even that was pushing it.

  I watched him from the corner of my eye. He hadn’t changed much in the last few years. His skin, browned from a lifetime spent working outdoors in the blazing Texas sun and lined with light wrinkles, his dark hair, now more gray than brown but still just as full as it had been when Kasey and I were girls, and his light eyes, the only blue pair in the family. Mama’s had been green, too, but dark like mine, not Kasey’s watery emerald.

  We finished our meals in that companionable silence, listening to the sounds of silverware lightly scraping plates, both of us considering the day ahead and our part in it.

  Chapter Three

  Pete

  Sunday

  I’d run into some nasty weather during the trip to Dallas — high winds, hail, and pouring rain. It wasn’t safe to transport the new colt with all that plus a tornado warning, so I spent the night holed up in a hotel down the street from the ranch while the power flickered on and off for half the night.

  The following morning, I drove over to the ranch, loaded the new colt into my horse trailer, and drove the nearly two hundred miles home under blue, cloudless skies. I made pretty great time, too. The roads were empty this early on a Sunday. I pulled up to my ranch at just past ten.

  I got out of my truck and walked around back to let out the new colt just in time to see a big gray pickup pull in behind me, so close I didn’t have room to unload the trailer. I lifted my hand, waving at Sawyer, who was grinning behind the wheel. He hauled himself out of the truck and came over, fixing his the cowboy hat on his head as he approached.

  “Hey, Pete,” he said, reaching to shake hands.

  I pounded him on the shoulder. “What’s going on, Sawyer?”

  “I saw Lacey in town this morning. She said you drove out to Dallas yesterday.” He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. They looked brand new. Sawyer was the only guy I knew whose jeans always looked fresh from the clothing supply store. Not his boots, though. They were so worn, you’d swear they were the ones he was born in.

  “Yeah, I was expecting to run up there and come straight back again, but the weather went sour on me. A tornado touched down outside of the city, and there was hail as big as baseballs. It wasn’t safe to bring a horse home in that.”

  He hawked some spit onto the hard-packed dirt driveway. He had some chew tucked in behind his bottom lip. “Sure enough.” He wiped his mouth. “How far into the city did you have to go?”

  “The breeder’s place is outside of Dallas, but I had to go through the city to get there. I wouldn’t want to put up with that kind of traffic every day.” I whistled to show how bad it had been as I shook my head and leaned back onto the trailer.

  The colt was moving around inside, curious to check out his new surroundings. The rancher had named him Elroy, which might’ve been part of the problem. Sticking a poor horse with a name like that. I’d have to see what Lacey thought about it. She’d named all the other horses we’d had come through the ranch for the past fifteen years. Hell, she’d even given Riley his name after he showed up on the farm as a scrawny, underfed puppy. “I got a good deal on him because he’s so difficult to handle.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “The breeder’s older and doesn’t have a lot of help on his farm. The colt just hasn’t been socialized well. He’s only a year old. It’s nothing Lacey can’t fix. She’s got the magic touch.” I tipped my cowboy hat back off my head so I could mop my sweaty brow with the handkerchief I kept tucked in my back pocket before putting it back on again. “Speak of the devil.”

  Sawyer turned to watch Lacey pulling up in her big red truck, keeping far enough back so he’d be able to maneuver his own pickup around when he was ready to head out to town again. We watched Lacey step down from her truck and saunter our way, already smiling her big, shit-eat
ing grin.

  She wasn’t wearing her hat — she must’ve left it sitting on the passenger seat in her truck — and her curly blonde hair was hanging down around her shoulders. She almost never wore it loose, so it caught me a bit by surprise. As though reading my thoughts, she pulled it back out of her face and tied it low on her neck with a band she’d been wearing on her wrist. How she could mess with her hair and walk at the same time was a complete mystery to me. I had to stand still in front of a mirror when I combed my hair. Daddy used to tease me that I couldn’t chew gum and ride a horse at the same time.

  “I’m running into you everywhere, Sawyer,” she said. She gave him a brief hug before coming over to stand next to me by the trailer. She stepped up on the back to peek in, getting her first good glance at her next project. She stepped down again and turned to face us.

  “Y’all ever do anything besides stand around bullshitting?” she asked.

  Sawyer laughed, showing us his mouthful of white teeth. He hawked another dark glob of spit onto the ground before he answered. “I just came over to see how Pete here got along in Dallas. And, to tell you about the bet I have going.”

  That piqued my interests. I wasn’t really a betting man, but I didn’t mind a friendly wager now and then. “Oh yeah?”

  Lacey cocked her head, hands planted on hips, but didn’t say anything.

  “A couple of us in town are betting on how long it’ll take before you and Lacey finally admit to your feelings and just go ahead and get hitched.” He looked back and forth between us, laughing even harder than before at our reactions.

  “You need to get a life, Sawyer,” Lacey said, but she was smiling, too, her dark eyes glittering in the sun.

  I shook my head. “There are laws against marrying your sister for a reason. And, she counts as a sister.”

  “Could you even imagine that?” Lacey asked, turning her dark eyes my way, her face twisted into an overdone grimace at the thought. “The two of us together.” She gave a fake shiver from head to foot.

  “I’d rather drown slowly in a trough full of warm horse piss,” I said with a completely straight face that didn’t last more than a few seconds.

  The three of us laughed so hard, we had to hold ourselves up by bending over onto our knees. Lacey punched me in the arm, but it didn’t hurt as much as it usually did because she was laughing so hard. We all straightened up again, wiping at our wet eyes and grinning like the idiots we were. We started in on some more small talking, but didn’t get far before Sawyer had to go.

  “I’ll see you both around,” he said, tipping his cowboy hat to Lacey first, then to me. “Maybe next weekend at the barbecue.”

  We watched him climb back into his truck, turn around, and drive down the long, dirt driveway to the main country road, kicking up dirt as he went, so much that I couldn’t see his truck by the time he turned off the property.

  Lacey turned to me. “Let’s get this little guy out of the trailer before he overheats.” She stepped back so I could open the back of it. “What did you say his name was? Elrod?”

  I dropped open the bottom, creating a small ramp, and hoisted up the top. “It’s Elroy, which is just as god awful as Elrod.”

  She giggled. “I’m gonna need to do something about that. Aww, he’s precious.” She leaned to get a better look at the colt, her hands resting on the side of the trailer.

  I stepped inside slowly. “Easy now,” I mumbled, keeping my voice low as I reached slowly for Elroy’s halter. He shook his ears, but didn’t shy away, his eyes staying steady on me.

  I’d spent an hour on the ranch yesterday before I had to take cover at a nearby hotel just standing around on the paddock, letting the colt approach me on his own terms so he could get used to me. This morning, I groomed him slowly, all the while talking to him the way I would a human, but in a low, soothing voice. He was skittish from lack of socialization, but I thought he’d come around nicely once Lacey got her hands on him. He’d just been too much for that old rancher to handle.

  I pulled him out by the lead on his halter, still speaking to him nice and low. He came easily enough, his hooves clomping on the trailer floor until he stepped out onto the dirt.

  Lacey looked him up and down. He was a small quarter horse, only about thirteen months old, chestnut-colored, with a white patch running from between his eyes all the way down to his nose.

  “I thought you said he was hard to handle,” she said. She was fearless around horses, same as I was, which was one of the reasons she was so good training them. She took the lead from me and just let Elroy check out what he could see of his new surroundings. He stepped around in the dirt and shook his head.

  “That’s what that old rancher said. Really, I think he just hasn’t been around enough people and other horses. There weren’t many animals on the farm. Little guy warmed up to me well enough.”

  Lacey reached to pet Elroy between his big dark eyes, moving slowly. He didn’t flinch as she ran a light hand from his forehead to his nose.

  “He’s sweet,” she said. Her hands moved over his neck, giving him a good scratch like she would for Riley. “Young, but sweet. I can start with his training tomorrow. Let’s just get him used to the farm for now; put him out in the paddock with one or two of the calmer horses.” She thought a moment, her dark eyes still traveling over every inch of our new colt.

  “Getting him ready for racing is going to take time. I’ll be starting at square one.” She looked from the horse to me, her brown eyes serious. She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek. The girl was always dirty from something, even right after a shower. “With as much as I’m still working with the other horses, and now this guy, we’re gonna need someone at the ranch to tend to the barn and horses’ basic needs. I won’t have time and neither will you.”

  I hated to put out the money, but she was right. We should’ve hired someone last fall when we added three extra horses to the stable. We just worked so well together, I didn’t want to upset our happy little applecart by adding some stranger.

  I sighed. “I’ll put an ad in the Register.”

  She gave me a hard look, her sandy brows high, and I knew what she was thinking without her even saying so. But she also knew enough to just keep quiet, at least about this. There was no way in hell I was putting an ad any damned place on the internet. I didn’t even own a computer. The Round Rock Register wanted pages would just have to do.

  Chapter Four

  Emma

  Tuesday

  I walked around the back end of the barn, noting the rotting wood and overgrown weeds choking the rear exit. Most of the farm was overgrown. The fields hadn’t been tilled in ages. A few lonely cows were out to pasture, looking as neglected as the rest of the property. The rest had been sold, according to Mr. Myers, who was watching me assess his old, dilapidated barn with an open amount of suspicion.

  He’d made it clear when I arrived that he was against hiring a young lady, as he put it, but he was desperate. No one else had agreed to the terms of employment and low pay after laying eyes on the farm. I needed the job — I had some savings, but was burning through it quickly with paint and furnishings for my new place — but I didn’t think I needed it this bad. Ten dollars an hour for the months of backbreaking labor it would take to whip this place into shape just wasn’t worth it.

  “You said you knew how to look after horses,” Mr. Myers said, his words harsh, like he was itching to catch me in a lie.

  “I’ve ridden them since I was about three,” I answered.

  “I want to start charging to stable horses on the farm. You could help with that.”

  I’d already been inside the barn and got out as quickly as I could. No light, no ventilation, and the damp smell of moldy decay, rusting farm equipment, and rotting hay. I hadn’t even wanted to sneeze in there for fear the roof would come down on my head. Mr. Myers had stayed outside, which I thought was telling. I wouldn’t feel comfortable sheltering a stray dog in that deathtrap of a barn, let
alone horses. It would cost thousands of dollars just to get the condition of it from dangerous to poor. From the look of the house and the rest of the property, that was money Mr. Myers didn’t just didn’t have to spend.

  “I thank you kindly for your time,” I said, tipping my hat to him. “I’ll give you a call as soon as I sort through my options.”

  He grumbled at that, but I just bid him a good day and walked out to where I’d parked my car. I could feel him raking me with his squinty stare the whole way. My cell phone rang as I was getting into my car. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was my sister.

  “Hey, Kasey,” I said.

  “Em, Daddy’s gonna barbecue. You wanna come over? It’s been a few days. You could tell us how your job search is going!”

  I didn’t have to think about it long. My stomach was yowling at me. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and that hadn’t been much. I’d been too anxious over my two interviews. But neither of them had gone very well.

  “Sure,” I said. “Tell Daddy I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I pulled out of the driveway, minding the potholes, as soon as I hung up the phone. The drive to Daddy and Kasey’s took less than ten minutes. I was born and raised in Round Rock, so I felt the most at home in this county in general, and on this property in particular. Daddy had sold off a chunk of land after Mama died and set up some accounts for Kasey and me to use for college and a down payment on a house. Kasey hadn’t started school yet, so her money was just sitting untouched. I had a partial scholarship, which meant I could put more of the money down on a house after I graduated. I’d actually signed the paperwork three weeks before I had my degree in hand. Thanks to the money Daddy had put aside for me, I only had a small mortgage payment to make each month on top of my other expenses.

  I parked and went around back of the house. Daddy only barbecued on nice days, and he liked to eat out at the picnic table. I found him and Kasey at the table already, a steaming plate of grilled chicken in the center along with potato salad and baked beans, both store-bought, probably by Kasey. I slid into my seat.